Music reviews Cordell Klier

Music reviews Cordell Klier

Music Reviews

The purpose of this page is to provide added exposure
to musicians I respect. The bar is set high. To pass Landschaft quality
control, the music must be of a quality that meets or surpasses the standard
that would secure them a commercial recording release, and/or that I feel
an itch to do a Landschaft mix of. I do not review everything they produce
- see the band's own websites for complete chronologies - what I review
is what I encounter, when I encounter it.

Cordell Klier: 12 February 2008

Metadata: Album review: Repeal Compulsion. Overview: Dark
Ambient; bleak. The album is available as a high bitrate MP3 from Darkwinter
- dw044. A collaboration jointly by Cordell Klier "a sound artist
with a reputation for being very expansive towards his work while wielding
an uncompromising sophistication." and Datura 1.0 "a long standing veteran
of the American noise scene.". Two artists working in partnership risks
an oil and water separation. The challenge is to produce a synergistic
multiplication rather than a deflated subtraction. In that respect the
listener has to make his or her own mind up, for here the listener is
in a cultural bubble adrift -for there are few clues or references upon
which to form a judgement of this work. The title gives nothing away.
A question or an exclamation; opposites. The cover art is abstract. That
too provides few clues, except in a paradox - it's vivid colours contradict
the monochromatic contents. And so I explore. After a deep gulp of oxygen
I descend the depths, where I find dw044 lurking in the primaeval sediment.
Between Coelocanth and Spider Crab, picking apart the etiolated morsels,
that have sunk from more fertile strata of the biosphere. White and pink
noise are the warp and weft of this work, holding the most attenuated
scraps of melody and harmony together, brittle as a papyrus fragment obscured.
Some would say this work is too far from it's reference points; remote
in it's distance from the familiar. But others would disagree saying it
defines a new border; a flag that bounds the cultural outpost. Nietzsche
said, "there are no facts, only interpretations". Reversing that principle
into this work, the interpretation starts by the fact that it is immediately
contexted by it's placement in Darkwinter.com. There is the clue to it's
identity. Judge it among the work of it's peers. Prize the jgsaw piece
outif it's place in the puzzle, turn it around examine it. Does it have
a tale to tell, a message to deliver an image that depicts. Overtly it
is deeply nhilistic - the choice of timbres has been made to make this
a work that confronts and challenges. The album when listened to end to
end has an anaesthetic effect. It is a mask, chaff, a consumer of the
sonic space. It is then, a musical equivalent to the value Null in computing.
Any operation upon Null always results in Null. But when it is initialised,
it takes on the potential to be interacted upon. You need the key that
effects this initialisation. The cultural reference points. I'm again
struggling to find meaning and explore again the arcane histories of philosophy
- via Kant's analytic synthetic distinction, part of his seminal "Critique
of Pure Reason" that posits two views centered on the existence of prior
experience - and on to a later exploration of the Kantian theme by the
Logical Positivists who argued on the subtleties of analytic proposition:
"a proposition that is made true by the conventions of language." This
proposition when applied to music - or any mode of expression - of an
"experimental" nature defies it's audience; the conventions of language
are deliberately subverted, inviting that audience to build new associations
and a new syntax. Once that process is complete, the work no longer has
meaning as an abstraction - it is absorbed and becomes part of the lingua
franca, and gravitates towards a place in the taxonomy of genre. So where
does this leave Repeal Compulsion. In positioning itself within a genre-specific
environment, the work has gone a long way down the path of definition
- it falls within a structure and context. The artist has made a concious
decision to position the work among an audience of peers. The language
is known. Does that neutralise it as a work of art? No. Does it neutralise
it as a novel work of experiment, Yes? There remains after this journey
of definition - what makes good art - the subjective - do I like listening
to this work. On an intellectual level, yes - it expands the mind to seek
meaning when there was an empty space. On a subjective aesthetic level,
the answer has to be no. It is too dark a shade, too arid. It suckles
uninvited on the spirit leaving a sense of emptiness, and that is a feeling
I would prefer to avoid. But Darkwinter subscribers who thrive on this
feeling will take it to their heart.

Metadata: Album review: arch lexicon (PHI) / myth surpassing
love surpassing myth. Overview: Dark Ambient; understated; intense. The
album is available as a high bitrate MP3 from Darkwinter
- dw037. Glitch and Drone. Two poles. Agitation and torpor. Competing
for space in the same sonic landscape, these two forms are ably meshed
in this, Klier's opus work. The tension between these diametrically opposed
forms builds like a static charge crackling in random fractures. Chunks
of noise shear away from the firma, spiralling into oblivion. There are
few textual clues in this stark nhilistic work. The audacious challenge
to the listener - to build free associations is implicitly stated from
the outset. Klier's confidence in his medium of expression is masterful
in this respect. This is a work that tests the limits of imagination;
invites the listener to build visualisations, search for memories and
associations, grasp for clues, inspiration, expectation. And that is what
I like about it. It is a blank canvas to fill with the sum of one's experience.
Klier does not worry about providing clues, tropes or metaphor - he trusts
in his audience's own intelect to do the building. His soul is laid bare,
and all we can do as humble consumers of this timeline of angst, is open
our minds in return. Investing that trust will yield the reward; deny
the trust and listening to this work will be an empty experience. I cannot
say that this is music to "like" in the aesthetic sense. Rather it is
a work that offers the opportunity for immersion in a stochastic sonic
rhetoric, where the rewards are by no means predictable and may change
upon each listen. This work pushed my emotional rudder off a few degrees
on a new tangent - a collision of good fortune for an artist, and the
mark of success in this ambitious project.